Thinking Beyond The Curriculum
Read More“it is not enough to just not be racist (or sexist, or homophobic, or transphobic) in a world which has racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia built in to its very fabric. We have to do more.”
Read More“Cis-normative thinking therefore has disastrous consequences when it perpetuates the idea of passing being a requirement for those who aren’t cisgender“
Read More“The reason we are seeing such outrage, and even riots, in the U.S.A today is due to the level of systematic oppression that black people have faced across the world for much of the last millennium”
Read More“Sanctions, punishments, threats…these may bring some short term sense of comfort that justice is being done, but true justice comes when we no longer need such threats to ensure good behaviour. When the logic of the genuine consequences of an action is enough to make people make better choices. When police aren’t racists and politicians aren’t liars because the obvious wrongness of being a racist or a liar, and its logical consequence in the death and suffering of innocent people, is sufficient to not want to be racist or lie. “
Read More“To re-open schools before it is safe to do so is to mistake the purpose of schools and ignore how fundamentally transformed a “Covid-secure” school will be from the schools we knew before. With no obvious benefit for returning to the socially distanced classroom before it is safe to do so, we must, as both teaching professionals and as a wider society, ask the question of what we are trying to achieve with the push to reopen our schools? “
Read More“When the stakes are this high (life and death) we need to be able to separate nostalgia and sentiment for what is sensible and what is necessary. “
Read More“the world has changed. And here are the questions arising to me as it does…”
Read More“In the name of public health, but also sense and logic, we must close all UK schools now.”
Read More“Doing the right thing only becomes hard when we have constructed a world which puts embedded obstacles in the way of doing so.”
Read More“often neither students or teachers remember the justificatory roots for the powers, privileges and obligations which interplay within the classroom, and that this lack of awareness may well be the source of much student/teacher conflict at school.”
Read More“are those of us in society who chose to be teachers within the current education system actually demonstrating good enough character to be suitable character “role models” for the next generation?”
Read More“A teacher therefore has a duty to model democratic engagement to their students. A teacher not discussing an upcoming election or not having an opinion on the current political situation sends a negative message to their students that political engagement is not important.”
Read More“Imagine giving a friend a brand new MacBook for their birthday. It is highly likely they will assume the computer is somehow broken, secondhand, or stolen before they would simply accept that you have spent that much money on them and expect nothing in return. Because when something that good is given away for free, for no reason, it makes no sense in a world where everything has a price and where we have been socialised into a worldview that says money has ultimate value and should be collected, even hoarded, as much as possible. To give something of value away for free is the action of a crazy person. Sensible citizens only part with something of value if it will bring them something of more value in return. At least, that is the story we have been conditioned to tell ourselves.”
Read More“I think of the Chinese Room often as a teacher, especially around exam season, and wonder how much our obsession with testing has led to a Chinese Room approach to learning?”